Busi­ness exec­u­tives are dra­mat­i­cal­ly under­es­ti­mat­ing the dig­i­tal com­plex­i­ty of their enter­pris­es’ appli­ca­tion land­scapes, pos­ing a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge for orga­ni­za­tions seek­ing to effec­tive­ly opti­mize their tech­nol­o­gy investments.

Accord­ing to Walk­Me’s recent­ly released State of Dig­i­tal Adop­tion research report, dig­i­tal inef­fi­cien­cies cost large enter­pris­es over $104 mil­lion alone in 2024, due to under­uti­lized tech­nol­o­gy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty challenges. 

With AI adop­tion a hot-but­ton issue for orga­ni­za­tions world­wide, the report — while out­lin­ing sev­en dig­i­tal adop­tion best prac­tices and their busi­ness impacts — focused on the readi­ness gap between AI invest­ment and busi­ness result, reveal­ing a dis­con­nect between enter­prise ambi­tions and adop­tion trends. 

Part of the prob­lem, the report indi­cates, is that exec­u­tives lack vis­i­bil­i­ty into what appli­ca­tions are being used with­in their busi­ness­es. While exec­u­tives esti­mate employ­ees at their orga­ni­za­tions use an aver­age of 37 appli­ca­tions, the aver­age large enter­prise actu­al­ly has around 625 appli­ca­tions in use, rep­re­sent­ing a stag­ger­ing 1,600 per­cent vis­i­bil­i­ty gap.

The dis­con­nect is par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­found for orga­ni­za­tions invest­ing in AI ini­tia­tives. ​“While 79 per­cent of exec­u­tives express con­fi­dence in achiev­ing AI trans­for­ma­tion goals, only 28 per­cent of employ­ees feel ade­quate­ly trained, and just 25 per­cent can use AI to work more effi­cient­ly,” wrote Dan Adi­ka, CEO and Co-Founder of WalkMe, in an announce­ment of the research results for SAP.

“Enter­pris­es now face a choice: con­tin­ue accu­mu­lat­ing trans­for­ma­tion debt and lag behind the com­pe­ti­tion, or embrace dig­i­tal adop­tion as the bridge to AI-pow­ered suc­cess.” — Dan Adi­ka, CEO and Co-Founder of WalkMe

“While dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion lead­ers gen­er­at­ed $9 tril­lion in share­hold­er val­ue from 2018 to 2023, oth­ers missed $5 tril­lion in poten­tial gains,” Adi­ka added. ​“Enter­pris­es now face a choice: con­tin­ue accu­mu­lat­ing trans­for­ma­tion debt and lag behind the com­pe­ti­tion, or embrace dig­i­tal adop­tion as the bridge to AI-pow­ered success.”

Dig­i­tal Adop­tion Enables Busi­ness Impact in SAP Ecosystem

This analy­sis of dig­i­tal adop­tion chal­lenges comes at a sig­nif­i­cant time for the SAP com­mu­ni­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en SAP’s $1.5 bil­lion acqui­si­tion of WalkMe. A dig­i­tal adop­tion plat­form provider, WalkMe focus­es on opti­miz­ing work­flows by mon­i­tor­ing appli­ca­tions and pro­vid­ing users with sug­ges­tions to help them nav­i­gate ERP complexity. 

With its acqui­si­tion of WalkMe, SAP sought to bol­ster its busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion offer­ings, com­ple­ment­ing the trans­for­ma­tion suite of SAP Sig­navio and SAP LeanIX to dri­ve adop­tion and con­tin­u­ous val­ue real­iza­tion for SAP cus­tomers embark­ing on trans­for­ma­tion journeys.

“Appli­ca­tions, process­es, data, and peo­ple are the four key ele­ments of a suc­cess­ful busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion,” stat­ed SAP CEO Chris­t­ian Klein in a press release at the time. ​“By acquir­ing WalkMe, we are dou­bling down on the sup­port we pro­vide our end users, help­ing them to quick­ly adopt new solu­tions and fea­tures to get the max­i­mum val­ue out of their IT investments.”

The find­ings in Walk­Me’s research report under­score the impor­tance of incor­po­rat­ing dig­i­tal-adop­tion best prac­tices into dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion efforts. Par­tic­u­lar­ly with large enter­pris­es invest­ing twice as much in AI last year as they did in 2023, fail­ing to incor­po­rate dig­i­tal-adop­tion strate­gies can come at an increas­ing­ly steep finan­cial cost.

Accord­ing to the report, orga­ni­za­tions that do not imple­ment adop­tion best prac­tices achieve only a 22 per­cent return on invest­ment (ROI) on dig­i­tal-trans­for­ma­tion invest­ments, a fig­ure that near­ly triples to 64 per­cent with just one best prac­tice imple­ment­ed and reach­es 85 per­cent ROI for orga­ni­za­tions imple­ment­ing three or more practices.

The human cost of poor dig­i­tal adop­tion is sim­i­lar­ly sub­stan­tial, with employ­ees esti­mat­ing that they waste an aver­age of 36 work­ing days a year while strug­gling with tech­nol­o­gy issues. Fur­ther­more, 64 per­cent of employ­ees stat­ed they need to use mul­ti­ple appli­ca­tions to per­form their jobs. The report refers to this as a ​“pro­duc­tiv­i­ty para­dox,” where­in invest­ments in dig­i­tal tools fail to trans­late into pro­duc­tiv­i­ty gains.

The con­trast between elite adopters and typ­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions is par­tic­u­lar­ly stark. The 7 per­cent of enter­pris­es clas­si­fied as ​“elite dig­i­tal adopters” by Walk­Me’s research report esti­mate that 90 per­cent of employ­ees use AI at work, com­pared to 63 per­cent at oth­er orga­ni­za­tions. Exec­u­tives at these high-per­form­ing com­pa­nies are also more than twice as like­ly to incor­po­rate AI assis­tants into employ­ee workflows.

Accord­ing to the report, orga­ni­za­tions are increas­ing their invest­ments in adop­tion exper­tise. Cur­rent­ly, 63 per­cent of enter­pris­es main­tain cen­ters of excel­lence for dig­i­tal adop­tion staffed by six or more peo­ple, while this per­cent­age is pro­ject­ed to rise to 73 per­cent by 2025. Over 16,000 indi­vid­u­als list­ed dig­i­tal adop­tion exper­tise on LinkedIn at the time of the report’s pub­li­ca­tion, while 80 per­cent were either already using or plan­ning to use gen­er­a­tive AI to enhance soft­ware adop­tion in their organizations.

WalkMe Results Align With SAP’s Strate­gic Rationale

Look­ing ahead, the report’s find­ings reflect a grow­ing matu­ri­ty in how busi­ness­es approach AI, as they move beyond ear­ly exper­i­ments toward method­i­cal imple­men­ta­tion strate­gies. Instead of pur­su­ing the lat­est fea­tures, com­pa­nies and their staff will focus more on build­ing strong foun­da­tions — bet­ter secu­ri­ty pro­to­cols, stream­lined effi­cien­cy, and robust man­age­ment systems.

The report advis­es com­pa­nies seek­ing bet­ter dig­i­tal adop­tion results to bal­ance ambi­tious AI goals and con­crete imple­men­ta­tion plans, tack­le the dis­con­nect between what lead­ers see of their com­pa­ny’s tech­nol­o­gy invest­ments and what employ­ees expe­ri­ence nav­i­gat­ing com­plex work­flows, and make seri­ous invest­ments in train­ing so employ­ees can prop­er­ly use the tools they’re given.

With­in the SAP ecosys­tem, these find­ings align with the strate­gic ratio­nale behind the WalkMe acqui­si­tion. Dr. Wal­ter Sun, Glob­al Head of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence at SAP, recent­ly told ASUG that WalkMe com­pletes SAP’s busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion man­age­ment port­fo­lio by adding ​“a strong peo­ple com­po­nent” to the exist­ing process, appli­ca­tions, and data dimen­sions already cov­ered by oth­er areas of its busi­ness-trans­for­ma­tion suite.

“Hav­ing SAP Sig­navio, SAP LeanIX, SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form, and now WalkMe work­ing togeth­er, we can help our cus­tomers per­form a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney even faster and more effec­tive­ly,” Sun explained. 

“Of course, WalkMe will help to enhance the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of our dig­i­tal AI assis­tant,” he added. ​“It can over­lay web, mobile, and desk­top apps, includ­ing SAP and non-SAP sys­tems, with­out inte­grat­ing online soft­ware. By com­bin­ing WalkMe’s adop­tion capa­bil­i­ties with SAP’s Joule copi­lot, SAP will be able to offer bet­ter AI assis­tance in the user experience.”

WalkMe’s adop­tion capa­bil­i­ties will enhance pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by pro­vid­ing on-screen guid­ance and automa­tion fea­tures that help Joule’s users to nav­i­gate com­plex dig­i­tal process­es with sim­pli­fied work­flows, address­ing pre­cise­ly the kind of vis­i­bil­i­ty gaps high­light­ed in this report.

For more, read Adika’s assess­ment of the WalkMe report find­ings, and dive into the full report here.